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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24052057">suitcase of memories i almost left behind</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingthesky/pseuds/flyingthesky'>flyingthesky</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Blind Box Mystery Fics [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (1990)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(to audra for handwavey reasons), Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Memory Loss, Mike Hanlon Loves Bill Denbrough, Period-Typical Racism, Post-Canon, Post-Pennywise (IT), Temporary Amnesia, it's the 90s you know how it be</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 17:33:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,683</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24052057</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingthesky/pseuds/flyingthesky</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Mike somehow gets a job on horror author William Denbrough's Maine ranch looking after his library and also sometimes his disabled wife, Audra. The only problem is that Mike keeps having weird dreams and his boss keeps looking at him like he's seen a ghost.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Audra Phillips &amp; Mike Hanlon, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Blind Box Mystery Fics [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1715392</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>suitcase of memories i almost left behind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Michael Hanlon?” There’s something familiar about the man holding out his hand, but Mike can’t quite place it. He shakes it off—William Denbrough’s face is on the back of every book he writes. Mike’s obviously seen his face before. “Bill Denbrough, hi. Do you need help with your things? My car’s right over there.”</p>
<p>“Hey, Bill. Call me Mike.” Mike shakes his hand and then lifts the suitcase he’s carrying in his other hand. “This is all I have, actually. I had to ship my books over, so they should arrive at your ranch in a few days.”</p>
<p>“Good, good.” Bill smiles, and something in the center of Mike’s chest aches like he’s been stabbed. Not that he would know what that felt like, since he’s never been stabbed. “Did you have any questions about the job? Want to know anything about Castle Rock?”</p>
<p>Bill pops the trunk of his AMC Eagle, which has wood textured siding and looks immaculately maintained. It’s a nice car, but Mike assumes that’s what being a best-selling author gets you.</p>
<p>“You got her,” Mike says. He doesn’t know why he says it, he just does. “I mean, your car. She’s a real beaut.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, she is.” Bill doesn’t seem to notice Mike’s weirdness, which is a relief. “I always wanted one of these, but I couldn’t afford one. Now I figure, what the hell? I can afford it, no reason not to.”</p>
<p><i>I know you did</i>, Mike wants to say, <i>I’m happy your dreams came true.</i> That’s not right, though. None of it’s right, and Mike turns that over in his head as they drive out to the ranch.</p>
<p>----</p>
<p>“Good morning, Audra.” Mike carefully sets the cup of coffee down in front of Audra, who smiles at him. “What’s your schedule for today?”</p>
<p>“I’ll just sit in the library while you work, if that’s okay?” Audra picks up her cup with both hands, and sips at it slowly. It’s only three-quarters full, otherwise Audra might spill it. “Sorry for making you babysit me.”</p>
<p>“It’s no trouble,” Mike says, turning back around to finish making them breakfast. This wasn’t really what he imagined when he took the job, but he can’t say he minds helping Audra out. “Scrambled or over-easy?”</p>
<p>“Scrambled.” Mike doesn’t have to turn to know that Audra is smiling at him. She never takes her eggs anything but scrambled, because anything else is too difficult to eat with her limited motor skills, but she appreciates the illusion of choice. “Did Bill tell you his schedule for today?”</p>
<p>“No, why?” Mike doesn’t tell Audra that Bill’s been avoiding him, and he practically runs away every time they’re in the same room. “Am I not making him breakfast too?”</p>
<p>“He left this morning for Boston,” Audra says. Her words are slow, carefully enunciated the way she speaks when she’s trying to downplay her accent. “Some kind of book thing? I just know he—Bill doesn’t mean it, but he’s very forgetful. Please don’t hold it against him.”</p>
<p>Mike would never hold forgetting something against Bill. He doesn’t know why, he just knows that forgetting isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes, you need to forget things to protect yourself.</p>
<p>“I won’t,” he says. Then, without knowing why: “There are some things we aren’t meant to remember.”</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>In the middle of an otherwise normal night, Mike jerks awake. He’s drenched in a cold sweat, disoriented and unsure of what just happened.</p>
<p>There was—the sewer? Eddie and Stan both—hesitantly, Mike lifts the nightshirt he’s wearing and touches his fingers to the scar on his side, the one that he can never remember the source of. He was stabbed by, by . . . the memory slips through his fingers like water and Mike struggles to breathe.</p>
<p>Getting out of bed, Mike stumbles over to his desk and opens a drawer he hasn’t touched since he moved to Castle Rock. Hands shaking, he pulls an old notebook out and starts to read.</p>
<p>----</p>
<p>“Bill?” Mike knocks on the frame of the open door. “Dinner time.”</p>
<p>When Bill looks up, it’s like he’s somewhere far away and too close all at once. Then he blinks, and the moment is gone. Some part of Mike wants to ask if Bill remembers too. If that’s why he’s been avoiding Mike.</p>
<p>“Dinnertime? Have I really been working that long?” Bill shakes his head. “Sorry, uh. I’ll be right out.”</p>
<p>Mike lets him be, and returns to the dining room where Audra is already sitting. She’s eating slowly and methodically, which Mike gathers has something to do with—neither Bill nor Audra is quite sure what’s wrong with her, but the gist of it is that Audra had something like a stroke and lost a good portion of her fine motor skills. She also gets tired easily and sometimes shakes with the effort of doing physical tasks. At first, Audra was wary of accepting his help, but she’s come to realize that Mike only ever helps her with the worst parts of tasks and leaves the rest of it to her.</p>
<p>“Hey,” Bill says as he comes into the dining room. He kisses Audra on the temple before sitting down and starting on his own dinner. “Oh, you made your mother’s eggplant parmesan.”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Mike says, even though he doesn’t know how Bill knew that. He’s never made it before. “Eggplant’s in season, so it seemed appropriate.”</p>
<p>“You know you don’t always have to cook for us.” Audra delicately dabs at her face with a napkin. “We can afford to order out once in a while.”</p>
<p>“I enjoy cooking.” Cooking is like a puzzle, and that’s something Mike can solve. Bill, on the other hand, is a mystery. “It’s no trouble, really. Besides, you let me stay in the extra bedroom so cooking sometimes is really the least I can do.”</p>
<p>“You used to work on a farm with your parents.” Bill is frowning, like he’s remembering something. “No, you were a lighthouse keeper?”</p>
<p>“Bill?” Audra looks concerned. She touches his shoulder gently. “Are you all right?”</p>
<p>“Sorry,” Bill says. “Sorry, I just. Sorry.”</p>
<p>----</p>
<p>“I see the way you look at him,” Audra says one day, not looking up from the book she’s been reading for the last hour. “He looks back, you know.”</p>
<p>“It’s just a curiosity.” When he says it out loud, the words almost feel true. He shelves another book, a collection of fairy tales. “He seems familiar, and I don’t know why.”</p>
<p>“No, that’s not what I meant.” Audra looks up then, setting the book she’s been reading aside and folding her hands in her lap. “You look at him like you’re <em>longing</em>.”</p>
<p>The right thing to do would be to tell Audra that’s absurd. Mike remembers Henry Bowers and his gang beating up anyone who was too different or weird. It’s bad enough just being Black and smarter than most white folk. He can’t add anything else on top of that. He just has to shelve the books. Just shelve the books.</p>
<p>“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mike finally manages. “I’m just curious, that’s all.”</p>
<p>There’s an interminable pause, a pause so long that Mike assumes that Audra has given up this thread of conversation or decided it’s not worth the effort of spending energy on. She does that a lot, because she gets tired so easily, but this is apparently not one of those times.</p>
<p>“He’s my husband for legal reasons,” Audra says. She’s picked up her book again, but it’s only resting on her lap. “Bill is my best friend, but I don’t want him. Not like you do.”</p>
<p>Mike doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing at all.</p>
<p>----</p>
<p>“Do you remember the sewer? Pennywise? You were—you called us home.”</p>
<p>Bill corners Mike in the library on a day when Audra is out of the house and Mike nearly drops the book he’s holding in his hands.</p>
<p>“Why can’t I remember?” Bill runs a hand through his hair, which is coming loose from where he tied it back. Mike wants to run his hands through it to neaten it and then carefully retie it. “I just get—there’s all these flashes of things, but it feels like I’m missing something.”</p>
<p>“It’s better that way,” Mike says. He shelves the book he’s gripping too tightly. “We were supposed to forget.”</p>
<p>That’s the wrong thing to say. Mike knows it is, because Bill has always been a person who thrives when he’s told something is impossible. He thrives on taking charge and that’s always the way it’s been, which is why Mike isn’t surprised that Ben decides to fix a problem by acting. He’s surprised that Ben acts by twisting his fingers in the front of Mike’s shirt and crushing their lips together.</p>
<p>“Oh,” Bill says when he breaks the kiss. His breathing is uneven. “<em>Oh</em>.”</p>
<p>----</p>
<p>They end up lying on the floor of the library, in the patch of sun filtering through the window. It feels like summer, even though it’s November, because Bill is rich enough to afford insane heating bills. While they lie there, they talk about Derry and about— </p>
<p>“I never wanted to forget you. I didn’t want to—I love you, you know that.” Bill reaches out, fingers gently caressing Mike’s cheek. “I just. You know how it was, in Derry.”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Mike says, because he doesn’t. He won’t let Bill carry the burden of growing up both Black and queer in a town made of pure evil. “I know. We’re not in Derry anymore, though.”</p>
<p>“No,” Bill says, “we’re not.”</p>
<p>Closing the space between them, Bill presses their lips together again. Mike lets himself drown in it, trying to soak it all the time they’ve missed. Even here, Bill takes the lead, and Mike is content to follow. Even when he didn’t remember, Mike followed Bill. He’d follow Bill down into the heart of Derry again, if it was necessary. Right now, though, all he wants is to stay in the sunlight and kiss the only person he’s ever loved.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>and then audra walked in, threw her hands up, and yelled "finally!" anyway if mr king can have the king cinematic universe and set everything in like the same three maine towns I can also play this game and set it fic in castle rock. fuck you, uncle king. it's mine now and i do what i want.</p>
<p>this was a mystery fic for someone who actually specified i was supposed to be writing from the 90s miniseries. you too can make me write your highly specific otps from less popular adaptations of uncle king's novels! or your less obscure otps from other things! <a href="https://hesatreat.tumblr.com/mysteryfic">just click here to find out more</a>.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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